Sebastian Junger Quotes
The only thing that makes battle psychologically tolerable is the brotherhood among soldiers. You need each other to get by.
An adventure is a situation where the outcome is not entirely within your control. It is up to fate, in other words
No matter how many people you kill, using a machine gun in battle is not a war crime because it does not cause unnecessary suffering; it simply performs its job horrifyingly well.
War is a lot of things and it's useless to pretend that exciting isn't one of them. (pg. 144)
I don't think journalists in World War II were objective about the Nazis, and I don't think they should have been.
The army consists of the first infantry division and eight million replacements.
All journalists hope that their work will inspire a broader conversation. I think that's just what journalism is.
I was surprised how open and unguarded the military was. I expected more scrutiny, more supervision from command.
I’ve stopped war reporting. I realized that I’d answered all of my questions about war and about myself.
People who do really dangerous tasks can't afford to sit around and discuss the merits of what they're doing.
There's no reason to do anything twice, and certainly no reason to do something that almost killed you.
A grenade launcher will easily take out a tank; a Molotov cocktail placed in its air intake will destroy one as well.
How do men act on a sinking ship? Do they hold each other? Do they pass around the whisky? Do they cry?
I'm a good liberal, and I grew up in a very liberal family and had very strongly held beliefs.
I had grown up during Vietnam. I had no connections to the U.S. military, and I had a pretty cynical default opinion about the U.S. military.
The attacks of 9/11 came out of Afghanistan. It was a failed state, a rogue nation. That's why al Qaeda was there in the first place.
If you shell a military base and happen to kill civilians, you have not committed a war crime; if you deliberately target cities and towns, you have.
Who wants a life of ease? And who wants a life in the office that you hate, and who wants to play golf?
...much of modern military tactics is geared toward maneuvering the enemy into a position where they can essentially be massacred from safety. (pg. 140)
Modern society has perfected the art of making people not feel necessary.
They had not yet started out across a continent of grief that a lifetime of walking could not cover.
An earthquake achieves what the law promises but does not in practice maintain, " one of the survivors wrote. "The equality of all men".
Today's veterans often come home to find that, although they're willing to die for their country, they're not sure how to live for it.